What clients want

--My cover story about client appetite for the legal services market, written for the December 2017 edition of the Lawyers Weekly magazine | What clients want

Law firms are conditioning themselves for high client expectation, Melissa Coade writes.

Like in motor sports, contenders on the business track hail from all over and vary in size. Despite clear disparities in the markets they serve and the deals they do, competitors can often vie for the same prize – that is a share of work from the same pie – and the nature of a winning offering can also be as scalable as it is sophisticated.

This is a circular conversation. What clients want will necessarily inform what law firms do. And leading legal businesses will always claim their strategy centres on understanding and meeting client needs.

This ambiguity in the obvious is what keeps legal industry reporters, conferences and consultants asking big bosses of successful firms what it is they are doing to keep their clients happy and businesses thriving. So for now, what do clients want? And which legal service providers are leading the field?

Gauging the in-house navigators

Lawyers have always poured time and energy into keeping a close relationship with their clients. It is a true endurance sport which, over the years, has seen legal professionals expand their skills beyond practice areas and focus more on developing the same kind of business nous their clients might be expected of.

Clients the world over want their lawyers to be more like business partners. This is part of an ongoing departure by clients who want more from their legal advisors and are looking for a holistic business relationship. It is a view consistent with the main takeaway of a new Law Firm Leaders Survey conducted with managing partners, senior partners, CEOs or chairs of the top 200 law firms in the UK and some global firms headquartered in the US.

Using a two-part method that included responses to survey questions and face-to-face interviews, the global report published by BDO has found that “strategic partnerships” are the new way to do legal business. More firms are putting greater emphasis on connectivity and integration, the report suggests, and clients are shopping for legal services that offer the best kind of transparency and control.

BDO professional service partner Tony Young says that law firm bosses recognise change is inevitable. He suggests that client relationships have entered a new era, with different expectations around what services law firms deliver and how. The time of purely transactional engagements between lawyers and clients is long gone.

“Clients expect to find that lawyers and other experts within the firm will provide more advice and support to their clients outside specific matters and often outside technical legal issues. For example, a growing trend is for in-house legal departments to turn to law firms for advice on management and operational issues, such as new technology investments,” Mr Young says.

Uber’s Katrina Johnson, associate general counsel and head of legal for Asia-Pacific, has gone a step further to encourage firms to think about how they can capitalise on data to inform the way they offer clients strategic advice. Speaking as part of a panel held in Sydney for the International Bar Association’s annual conference, Ms Johnson said the dynamic between clients and law firms has changed.

“What has won some law firms work that others have missed out on is the difference between those who are really willing to invest in the relationship and understand our business,” Ms Johnson says.

“One of the law firms on my preferred panel said: ‘We are going to use Uber to get around the city and understand the product and give you our feedback about user experience’. That allows them to put themselves in our shoes in terms of what problems we’re trying to solve for.”

LexisNexis has recognised the potential that big data promises law firms and subsequently created a number of high-volume data platforms and analytics tools that it says can free up more time for lawyers to get on the strategic fast track with clients.

Simon Wilkins, the general manager for LexisNexis Australia, has gone on the record to say that Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies have now advanced to the stage where there are tools that can contextualise information. In his view, this development has transformative implications for the legal industry.

“All the rich data that is available to firms now, having seen this happen with previous clients, and how things have played out, that’s a great value add,” Ms Johnson says. “To be able to say: ‘This is how it’s going to be, this is what you should be focused on, we get your product and we get your industry’ – I think those things are really helpful."

Uber, like the online home-sharing marketplace Airbnb, is part of a new march of disruptive companies that are changing the way traditional business operates. Customers embrace these with relative ease and so regulatory landscapes that never anticipated businesses of this type find themselves challenged. As everyday people normalise the new ways of doing business with companies that reimagine their services, strategic legal advisors must also keep pace.

According to Brent Thomas, who is Airbnb’s head of public policy for Australia, New Zealand, India and South East Asia, there is also an opportunity for imaginative lawyers to help navigate the regulatory challenges he sees as posing obstacles for his industry. 

Speaking to the same IBA audience as Uber’s associate general counsel, Mr Thomas said he believes strategic legal counsel have a useful role to play in a legal landscape which is not currently favourable to disruptor clients. 

“The whole notion of the regulatory model is a very interesting thing for me,” Mr Thomas says. 

“You’ve got consumers [who] are voting with their feet and moving often more quickly than lawmakers. The question [for lawyers] is not what is the law today but what should the law be, and how do we get there?”

In the driver’s seat

The ways that the traditional lawyer’s role has morphed is closely tied to the opportunity the big four accounting consultancy firms have seized to gain ground in the legal services space. With the blurring of the lines around what a lawyer looks like, it is those groups who are used to offering complex and diversified advice about whole businesses, leveraging the opportunities to step in and take clients away from law firms. But private law firms are also strapping in for the ride and responding in kind.

Top-tiers have openly acknowledged that the threat legal services arms of PwC, Deloitte, KPMG or EY pose to their business are unlikely to go away. Independent Australian law firms in particular view the big four as major competition, with senior figures from Clayton Utz and Gilbert + Tobin admitting that the moves of the big four inform their own market strategy.

Leading Australian law firms say the scale of the accounting constancies means their investment capacities cannot be underestimated. At Clayton Utz, chief executive partner Rob Cutler says the response has been to execute a new legal project management framework. The idea behind the initiative is to enhance the capacity of the leading firm’s workforce to project management. By combining technological capability with more sophisticated project management skills throughout the firm’s ranks of lawyers, the top-tier boss believes Clayton Utz is better able to report to its clients in the ways they want.

“Lawyers historically have not been trained in project management as a discipline and that education of our talent must be supported by the technology,” Mr Cutler says.

“This enables us to manage the product and report to the client by achievement against phase and work product and attendant cost by reference to project budgets.”

Mr Cutler has revealed that just as the Clayton Utz strategic team pays careful attention to what new ventures competitors are embarking, the firm is concerned with its client engagement. In fact, this is the law firm’s biggest priority. It is listening to clients that has deterred the firm from going the same ways as others have done, which is by merging with a larger global outfit about 10 years ago. Mr Cutler says this decision has seen client referral work to Clayton Utz bump up in terms of overseas sources.

“There has been a dramatic increase year-on-year over the last five years, both in revenue terms and in number of referrals,” Mr Cutler says.

Earlier this year Campbell Jackson, the national head of the EY’s professional services team, has told Lawyers Weekly that firms across the board are asking how they can remain relevant. The C-suite consultant is adamant that unless law firms take the idea of innovation and package it in ways that means something to clients, they will die.

“Some firms have approached innovation really well and have continued to do so. Some firms have made big bets the other way and staying constant to what their strategy actually is. But the firms that don’t change will not survive. When you look at the way things are done now and mirror that with client expectations, changes are constant. You’ve got to be on the move,” Mr Jackson says.

In his view, the next five years will offer a telling indication of which law firms have done things right and those who have failed to learn from their mistakes. Even among those who are innovating with the right measure of pragmatism and profit, Mr Jackson says he has observed a certain conservatism hold law firms back. Compared to accounting firms, for example, law firms are less willing to diversify their traditional revenue streams. Mr Jackson suggests that in some cases this may be attributed to the fear of being seen as a ‘hobbyist’ rather than a ‘specialist’.

“I do have a saying that I think is critical to professional services: fail quickly and fail cheaply. Failing’s okay. Just make sure it’s cheap, and just keep trying because eventually you’ll get it right.

“Innovation to me is doing more with less. Can you get innovation wrong? I think you can. You can lose identity and you can become something that you’re not,” Mr Jackson says.

Tech pedal to the metal

Where there is decided mood for law firms to switch up their legal services by stepping out of the cockpit and into a more innovative space – what are some of the market leaders doing to ensure this transformation happens but their identity is not diminished?

The findings of the BDO survey have also reported an appetite among clients for more digital solutions. Respondents say they are looking for more tools and platforms to facilitate collaborative ways of engaging. This includes fostering more strategic business partnerships with law firms.

Mr Young says platforms, such as the digital conveyancing technology adopted by Corrs Chambers Westgarth earlier this year, offer clients the connectivity and integration they are after.

“Shared technologies have the potential to change the way clients work with law firms, provide clients with more transparency and control, and provide the tools for more collaborative ways of working,” Mr Young says.

When the property practice at Corrs launched what it described as a pioneering approach to open innovation in October, it was one more string to the bow of the firm’s secure cloud-based solutions. The law firm said that it was an early adopter of the platform for all its national conveyancing and large-scale property transactions.

Developed by InfoTrack, the PlanIT platform offers streamlined management of document production, distribution, execution, reporting and settlement for off-the-plan apartment and master-planned communities.

Corrs said the platform has the potential to deliver time and cost savings to clients, while also enabling contracts to be sent anywhere within minutes. According to Peter Calov, a partner at Corrs, the firm wanted to be sure it had implemented the right software before committing to a complete e-conveyancing platform.

“After conducting extensive market research, including an analysis on whether to further develop in-house conveyancing software, we determined that the PlanIT solution was the best fit for our clients, the firm and our property team,” Mr Calov said.

“Initially the platform will be used by our national off-the-plan Developer Sales Group. Our team can transact using the platform without the need to enter data twice and clients will also have the added benefit of being able to log in via a client portal and view up-to-date sales information.”

Corrs’ PlanIT is one specific example among many legal tech solutions already operating in the market. There already exist a plethora of AI-powered descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytics that law firms are prototyping to complement, and in some cases automate entire legal functions.

The general manager of LexisNexis says the impact of the evolving legal tech solutions that are available are likely to put a stronger focus on the human relationships lawyers share with their clients.

“In the legal industry, these solutions are a technological leap, not just a step, and are set to streamline hours of manual legal research work as well as provide legal professionals with a distinct competitive advantage in the form of objective data points to better inform their litigation strategy,” Mr Wilkins says.

“While there is concern in the industry that technology could replace human functions, it is in fact far more likely to enhance the role that lawyers play. Indeed, it could make interactions ever more human.”

Partnership is a two-way street

For all the talk the opportunities that new technologies are flagging for law firms, being in the race boils down to maintaining a relationship with clients that matter. Sometimes that means telling a client what they may not want to hear or breaking the news about trouble on the horizon they never saw coming.

From the perspective of Uber’s Ms Johnson, a lawyer who can convey difficult advice straight is exactly what she wants from a strategic partnership.

“We don’t want to be told what we want to hear – I’m not paying for that. Maintaining professional standards and ethical standards is exactly what we’re seeking. And that doesn’t mean you can’t understand what we are trying to solve for as a client,” Ms Johnson says.

Kieren Parker, a partner of Sydney commercial firm Addisons, has also offered his views on the client-law firm relationship at the recent IBA conference hosted in Australia. Mr Parker stresses how important it is to know the difference between the needs of a client and communicating advice in the best interests of a client’s business.

“There is a real advantage in being the industry expert, and knowing not the companies in that industry, how regulated they are, the agency relationships they have, the liability risk they have, the role they play in their ecosystems without necessarily becoming conflicted in the advice you are giving,” Mr Parker says.

For the commercial lawyer, whose firm includes clients such as Virgin Enterprises, Bega Cheese and Coca-Cola, innovating for the benefit of clients and focusing on better ways to collaborate, cannot come at the cost of independence. He believes that clients do value the independent counsel of a good lawyer.

“You have got to get to know your client better and that means you need to tell your client what you think they need to hear.”

According to Ms Johnson, Uber is all about that kind of approach.

“I want to be tested on stuff; I want to be challenged; and I want legal advisors to have that arm’s length approach – but I also want you to get where we are going and what we are trying to solve, to encourage us to think about things more creatively,” she says.

Australia’s great dividing range

--My cover story about the Australian mid-tier law firm market, written for the November 2017 edition of the Lawyers Weekly magazine | Australia's great dividing range

The bedrock of traditional legal services has been subject to intense pressure in recent times, and from all directions. Fissures have emerged and split law firms into distinct groups, with global mergers casting the classic mid and top-tier layers into disarray.

In this special feature, Lawyers Weekly speaks with some of Australia’s remaining independent firms and asks what challenges the modern market poses and how they are finding success between a rock and a hard place.

A global metamorphism

Australia’s law firm stratigraphy was once a much easier concept to drill down. The shorthand of top-tier, mid-tier and boutique classification for legal service providers used to say something very specific about the clients a firm served, the size and scope of its practice groups and the fatness of its profit margins –but things have blurred.

While competition is fierce across the board, the pressure to innovate better and faster than the foray of NewLaw outfits that are bursting on to the scene, as well as picking a magic price point that satisfies the appetite for efficient, high-quality legal work, has made for a compelling case for some national firms to tie up with a global entity. Forces have driven some to the edge.

A recent example of this coming to bear is a portion of the fractured Gadens federation merging with global monolith Dentons. The Melbourne office of the prominent domestic law firm opted out of the international tie-up that was finalised in December 2016. Gadens offices in Sydney, Perth and Port Moresby meanwhile proceeded with the merger, with the Brisbane office also coming along for the ride to have an affiliate relationship with the global law firm but electing to hold on to its Gadens name.

Dentons global CEO Elliott Portnoy told Lawyers Weekly at the time that the firm’s entry into the Aussie legal market was “dramatically different” in its "polycentric" approach by adding entire firms with similar values to the network rather than going after lateral hires.

“For us, the ability to combine with an extraordinarily talent group of lawyers in Australia is the fulfilment of our clients’ desires. And we’ve already seen in a very short period of time the flow of new work from offices all around the world into Australia,” Mr Portnoy said.

Then six months later, the merger between mid-tier stalwart Henry Davis York (HDY) and global firm Norton Rose Fulbright (NRF) was announced in in June 2017. Like many global mergers before it, news of the union has led to the shedding of a number of partners.

The official reasons for the marriage were given in a public statement, attributed to HDY and NRF big bosses Michael Greene and Wayne Spanner. Both legal leaders described the merger prospect for their firms in optimistic and future-focused terms, leaning on the tag line: “a powerful combination for Australia”.

According to Mr Greene, HDY had been considering how to “re-engineer” the “proud and respected Australian law firm” for the future for some time. He went on to say in the statement that following client consultation, the HDY partnership agreed that “the time was right to look to join forces with an elite global law firm to continue to provide [clients] with an even greater level of service and industry expertise”.

The message that law firms are responding to client needs is a common justification given in favour of both the decision to merge with a global firm or the choice to hold on to independent status. The views shared for this feature suggest that different business leaders are fixed in their belief that one course is better for profit and productivity than the other. They all say the strategic steps taken in the past four years have positioned them well.

Of course, having a “good position” is also a matter of perspective. At the time of the HDY-NRF merger announcement, NRF global chief executive Peter Martyr noted the benefit of “critical mass” that HDY would bring the firm in Australia. The combination would help fulfil the ambitions of the NRF’s global strategy, he said.

“The addition of Henry Davis York will give us the critical mass we need in Australia to take full advantage of the steps already underway, at a global level, to modernise our business through the implementation of our 2020 business transformation strategy. This combination will allow us to bring the benefits of this transformation to more clients,” Mr Martyr’s statement said.HDY’s integration with NRF is expected to be completed by 1 December 2017.

At the time that this article went to print, six lawyers from the 124-year-old Australian firm had chosen to opt out of the tie-up and quit the HDY partnership for domestic rivals Corrs Chambers Westgarth and Mills Oakley. In the same month, four NRF partners also jumped out of the global firm to launch an office for Pinsent Masons in Perth. 

In August confidential sources have reached out to indicate that more HDY departures are expected to eventuate.Ten years ago, Mr Spanner had told Lawyers Weekly in what now looks like a prophetic interview about the waning relevance of Australia’s tier parlance that global law firms had no boundaries with respect to sector expertise because they were well placed to mobilise resources rapidly and broadly to meet client demand. 

Back in 2007, Mr Spanner’s prediction for the near future in Australia was an influx of at least 10 global firms to enter the local market.

Scratching the surface
In a climate where clients are demanding more for less, and where innovation is pushing change in all facets of business at a rapid pace, more lawyers are fighting for clients from the same pool. Domestic firms in particular are vocal in being regarded as preferred counsel for a great many international clients. This is the case for those hailing from the traditional top and mid-tier ends of the market scale that do not want their proud independence to be perceived as isolationist.

Far from it, in fact, domestic Australian firms see themselves unburdened by the dictates of an offshore board and equally desirable as an Australian referral for some of the major international powerhouses that do not want to send clients to magic-circle competitors or rival firms of similar size.

To understand the temptation, a national top or mid-tier law firm is presented with when a global merger is on the cards, four big bosses of independent firms offered their assessment of the current market conditions. The majority predict more mergers in future but also indicate they are benefiting from the opportunity that movement of this kind has left for others to swoop in on.

Being entrepreneurial in a buyers’ market

Gilbert + Tobin’s chief operating officer Sam Nickless says he can see why the prospect of a global merger may appeal to some breed of lawyers but he also dismisses the idea merger moves informs the way his firm strategises its market foothold. For one of Australia’s youngest leading independent corporate law outfits with offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, the focus at G+T is on a two-pronged strategy of excellence and productivity.

“I can hear the logic in mergers, certainly. I think for individual groups of partners there is an element where people will want to get a bit more scale and solidify some of the in-bound referral work, but it doesn’t inform our strategy a lot,” Mr Nickless says.

“But these mergers going on are not a big discussion point in our partnership meetings and the strategic conversations that I have.”

According to Mr Nickless, in some cases mergers can spell good news for top-tier national firms such as G+T. He suggests that this opportunity directly relates to the shrinking pool of independent Australian firms, which international firms without a local footprint would prefer to recommend to clients.

“When mergers happen, they do sometimes create opportunities for us because that will be another independent firm that is no longer independent and therefore, the inflow of referral business from offshore firms may no longer go there.

“Although, if it was a global firm merging with a local firm that had been a source of referrals before, that could be a challenge because the offshore firms that aren’t in Australia don’t want to send their clients to a competitor,” Mr Nickless says.

G+T has set its sights on developing expertise in its complex transactions space and has specific ambitions for its corporate and M&A practices. Mr Nickless also identifies major disputes, infrastructure financing and regulatory work as promising growth areas where the firm is paying careful attention.

Speaking about current market conditions, he notes that while the mood has improved and “settled down” in the last five years, competition is fierce. Mr Nickless believes it has become a buyers’ market, which he claims is a good thing because rival firms have come to hold one another to account for the quality, price and service on offer.

“The increasing use of technology and our clients’ understanding of what the potential benefits of technology are (and starting to price that into what they expect to pay for services) means that all of us as firms need to make sure that we are responding,” Mr Nickless says.

“I don’t think you can just stand on the fact that you’ve got the best lawyers and the best practitioners alone. That’s why G+T is pushing hard on the productivity side as well, because we need to be able to do as much as we can in an automated way with quality legal judgment on top. That’s the kind of unbeatable preposition,” he says.

The G+T partner adds that the firm is keeping a close eye on the manoeuvres of top-tier rivals, including the strategy of the big four accounting firms whose legal services arms have been building out in recent times.

“Their emergence in the legal space is definitely a dynamic in the market that we need to be across and we need to be thinking about.”

Mr Nickless also speculates that in an environment where some competitors are posting flat revenues, it must be difficult for certain camps to retain their top partners. He says merger in this context could be a sensible option for firms wanting to keep a lid on evacuating talent.

“The benchmarking that we see on the overall market is that the revenue level is flat and there are some growing and therefore there are some that must not be growing. Once you start to see decline in terms of growth, then you can have a very difficult situation because your partners can be attracted to other places that can pay them more.

“That is a challenge for firms and maybe one of the reasons why they might let you merge – a merger could be better than having a whole group of partners all going at once,” Mr Nickless says.

For G+T though, the self-directed destiny that comes with staying independent is central to the emphasis on entrepreneurialism that the firm’s culture thrives.

The scope for a law firm business to be agile in this way and adapt fast is something G+T has no plans of ditching. Mr Nickless says it is the very reason the firm can attract the respected practitioners that it does.

“Independence allows you to create an environment for the sort of partners that we like to attract, who also value their independence and like to feel that their destiny is in the hands of a group of people that they can see around the table together.

“It can work as an independent because you can move quickly, and you can prototype, and you kind of work in a collaborative team with a small group of people,” he says.

The mid-tier punching above its weight

Michelle Dixon, the Melbourne-based CEO of Maddocks, alludes to something similar when she talks about the broad culture shift taking place within modern mega-firms. She acknowledges that there are many different market pressures challenging national domestic firms, businesses such as Maddocks have found themselves to be the beneficiaries of change. Top lawyers want to belong to agile workforces and call their own shots, Ms Dixon says.

“We’re finding that it’s much easier for us to attract fantastic partners from some of the larger firms. And we have clients coming to us because we’re not interested in some of the rigidity that you get at some of the larger firms or the international firms.

“Maddocks is an equal profit share partnership. We do that because it breeds collaboration, which means our clients are looked after by the right people in the firm. There’s nothing in our remuneration structure that is a disincentive to ensure that the right person is looking after the client,” Ms Dixon says.

Those partners who are entertaining the idea of jumping from a global law firm and joining a domestic partnership want to cut loose from the strong possibility of conflicts of interest with a firm that represents so many client interests around the world, she added. This is a relevant observation given Maddocks’ recent coup in acquiring the entire team of the of DLA Piper Canberra office lawyers, which include two partners and 8 lawyers. The specialist government team parted ways with its international home.

“As part of an international firm, [DLA’s Canberra lawyers] were increasingly being subject to conflicts that were preventing them from doing a lot of the government work that they do.

“Obviously, the bigger you are and with the broader reach, the greater the number of clients you will have worked for somewhere in the world and therefore the more likely it is you will come into conflict issues. Being smaller, being domestic, we have less of those conflict issues and that’s very attractive to people who actively practice in the government space,” Ms Dixon says.

It is a sound example of how mergers that present opportunities to improve the critical mass to global firms like NRF can have the unintended consequence of hindering the business of certain practice groups like those servicing government.

Furthermore, Ms Dixon says that the profitability of a firm of a size like Maddocks can be seriously underestimated. Contrary to the view of some, she says mid-tier firms can rake in bigger profit margins than the firms servicing the top end of town.

“Assumptions are made, I think, by the big firms particularly about what firms our size can or can’t do. You will find that some of the firms in our part of the market are far more profitable than larger firms.

“The market is obviously changing a lot, but it is just not right to say that it is a disaster to be in a mid-tier. Maddocks has had 8 per cent revenue growth this year and we expect we’ll have at least 10 per cent revenue next year. We’re stronger than we’ve ever been,” Ms Dixon says.

“Success comes down to a willingness to invest and I think if you have your culture right, you will have buy in into a strategy about investing in your people and how they work in order to deliver those best services.”

The mid-tier boss adds that the firm’s strategic objective would be to sharpen its pricing tools so that clients can be quoted for legal services with greater certainty. This is in addition to the firm’s innovation agenda and commitment to flexibility, she says. Ms Dixon also rules out the possibility that Maddocks will consider a merger of the like of HDY and NRF.

“We are very proudly a domestic firm. We have no desire to be an international firm, and we’re unequivocal about that. There is no ambiguity about that. When we started Sydney, when we started Canberra, we did that by recruiting the right people in and then through organic growth – so merger is not something that we’re interested in,” Ms Dixon says.

The case for re-engineering business

Competition for the hearts and minds of clients and the brightest lawyers Australia’s market has to offer is an issue for all firms, but the changing market has meant doing so effectively has drastically changed in recent years. Sparke Helmore’s Mark Hickey says that demonstrating and selling a clear point of difference in what he calls the “new paradigm” for law firms is critical. Technology and the way it is harnessed and embedded in a firm is a key part of Sparke Helmore’s strategy, he adds.

“Digital disruption, the restructuring of businesses, the internet have had significant impact on our clients, particularly in the banking industry and the insurance industry with hyper competition coming in.

“That, in conjunction with the GFC, has seen the clients now making it very clear that we are in a new paradigm for providing legal services and that we have to step up to the challenge and the change,” Mr Hickey says.

Sparke Helmore’s chairman of partners, who is based in Newcastle, says that business transformation or “re-engineering” the delivery of legal services has been a priority for global and national firms alike. Those unwilling to change tack in their approach to business and who fail to make serious investment in technological innovations will be left behind, he suggests.

Mr Hickey has gone on to say that work in the order of process-driven litigation, investing in data analytics and restructuring the business have been some of the ways that Sparke Helmore is meeting these modern challenges. He underscores sectors in insurance, banking and finance as spaces where clients are driving the call for this change, adding that there is also a need to engage and reward the firm’s workforce with the innovation agenda.

“Lawyers tend to put themselves at the centre of attention of clients, but I believe that [legal services] are one part of the puzzle that clients need to have looked after. The firm is committed to sticking with its core legal competencies but where we have to provide adjacent services that are relevant to the law, we will do that and will invest in types of things like allied revenue lines,” Mr Hickey says.

“It’s a whole different paradigm to what it was when I started law. What I think we have to do today is cater for the young lawyers and enable them to invest and be involved in the business process. Part of that is the Bright Sparke initiative that we have at the firm, which is an innovation hub. It works on the basis that younger people are getting involved in that and we see it as a good thing for the firm, for clients and for retention.”

A more fundamental shift taking place in the mid-tier workforce is the way that lawyers now envision their career trajectory. It matters because senior talent from a number of global firms are increasingly being lured to national firms with a sense that the culture of an independent firm has better synergies with smarter business. In a crowded market, where the departure of leading partners and teams can bring heavy blows to a national law firm, Mr Hickey says, retention is critical.

“Unless we focus on our key values, it’s very hard to maintain high retention. Provided that we have flexibility, we embrace diversity and we have other opportunities for young lawyers to get involved in things other than just being 9am-to-7pm, at-work lawyers; I think it can be effectively addressed,” Mr Hickey says.

“Retention is one of five key metrics set out by the Sparke Helmore board. Both retention and values are two main metrics that the board looks at in terms of making sure that we keep abreast of the market in terms of diversity, market remuneration, and providing more exciting opportunities for our lawyers, which includes innovation and being involved with national clients. It’s about providing a good place to work.”

Smart price points

Pricing for services is where Tony Macvean sees a universal hardship being levelled against all firms in Australia, from NewLaw boutiques to the globals alike. It is a view consistent with that shared by Mr Nickless, who uses G+T’s investment in NewLaw market entrant LegalVision to demonstrate that clients need more mixed options to adjust to their different needs.

“It’s competitive at the top end and competitive in the middle as well. And with price pressure, there is a shift of work in house, and there are reducing volumes,” Mr Macvean says.

At Hall & Willcox, servicing corporate clients’ operational, ‘business as usual’ requirements has been a move that has served the firm well. This is certainly so in a market where the likes of G+T are focused on improving dominance in complex matters and large commercial transactions.

Mr Macvean says that by cultivating its ‘Smarter Law’ initiative, the firm has been successful in being appointed to legal panels for operational corporate work of this kind. He says Hall & Wilcox’s strategy relies on forging and maintaining relationships that gives lawyers a clear insight into the client’s value-conscious pricing needs.

“Business-as-usual work needs to be delivered at a certain price point where clients know what they’re going to pay and they feel like they’re receiving value. We think that we can do that well,” Mr Macvean says.

“It is a balance. If you go in too low [with your pricing], it’s just poor quality or lack of investment in the business. At the same time, for that operational ‘business as usual’ work, it needs to be provided at a price that demonstrates value.

The right price point calls on firms to be accurate in picking a figure that reflects the volume of the business coming to the firm, Mr Macvean suggests. He also sees merit in building client relationships that persuade them to invest with the firm and their mutual interests.

“You have to reflect all those different factors in coming up with a price that’s fair from the client’s perspective and fair from our perspective and provides value.

“There is no doubt that there’s competition and the work needs to be done at a price that is competitive and that is less than what the top tier firms might have traditionally charged for that work,” Mr Macvean says.

Hall & Willcox’s attempts to get a handle on collaborative problem-solving for clients, particularly those in the insurance and financial services spaces, is also about reinforcing a culture that is ready and willing to respond to disruption. Mr Macvean says it is a long-term commitment that no firm can afford to lose sight of.

“Culturally, our willingness to embrace that things are changing and to challenge ourselves to do better and to come up with smarter solutions is one reason that we’ve done well. And as I say, there’s lots more to do.”

“We recognise that it’s a competitive market and that there’s some disruption we have to embrace – so we’ve got a long way to go.”

Uluru summit delivers clear message to Australian lawmakers

--My story written for Lawyers Weekly online | Uluru summit delivers clear message to Australian lawmakers

Lawyers and legal academics have weighed in on new calls for constitutional reform to empower Australia’s first peoples as part of the nation’s next serious step towards Indigenous reconciliation.

A group of Indigenous Australians have issued a statement following three days of meetings at Uluru last week, with many describing it as a national way forward for serious reconciliation.

Two propositions were expressed in the Statement from the Heart to come from the Uluru National Convention.

The first was a new national consultative body to advise the Australian Parliament on laws that affect Indigenous people.

The second was the establishment of a Makarrata Commission, whose mandate is agreement-making between governments and First Nations, with oversight of a public truth-telling process.

It is expected that the federal Referendum Council will be presented with the Statement of the Heart later this month. A final report from the council to parliament will then determine what becomes of the statement.

Speaking to Lawyers Weekly, Professor Adrienne Stone from the University of Melbourne said she anticipated that the Referendum Council report would add crucial detail for both proposals. However, she also noted that the Uluru statement offered a good outline of what proposed law reform can be expected.

“I think there’s a bit of fleshing out to be done about what are the bare bones of the proposal as you see it in the Uluru statement,” Professor Stone said.

“We currently have a statement that is something like a consensus among Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal peoples, but it’s in general terms.

“The next stage will be for support to come from the Referendum Council, which is the government appointed body under which these dialogues took place,” she said.

According to the legal academic, the statement’s first proposition, to set up an indigenous consultative body, is the only proposition that will require constitutional change.

“The first proposal for what’s called a ‘First Nations Voice’ to be enshrined in the constitution would entail constitutional amendment,” Professor Stone said.

She explained this reform would likely involve the amendment of the constitution to form a representative group. That group would have a mandate to consult parliament on relevant Indigenous matters, and which had scope to give formal advice.

Professor Stone suggested that the consultations between this new body and the Australian government would be given formal status, with feedback tabled before the parliament.

“The proposal is that the body does not have any legally binding powers, no veto, nor will it constrain the parliament legally as a consultative body. We haven’t seen precisely what it involved but that’s my understanding of the bones of it,” she said.

Professor Stone also noted that the body would not act as a third chamber of parliament, sitting alongside the senate, but a strictly consultative body. Other parliaments in Scandanvia have adopted a similar model, she said.

For the vision of a constitutionally recognised Indigenous consultative body in Australia to be realised a referendum would have to take place.

In order for the referendum to succeed, an alteration bill would have to pass parliament, followed by a majority of Australian people voting ‘yes’ for the change. Professor Stone suggested this was obvious challenge that the proposals face in Australia’s context, given the nation’s history of voting against constitutional change.

“We need to have quite a robust and open-minded discussion about these proposals. And ultimately it’s only going to be with bi-partisan political support that this will pass.

“Formally and legally, there is the requirement for the parliament to engage and be prepared to pass a bill and then for the people to adopt it by essentially a double majority as a referendum,” Professor Stone said.

Indigenous woman Dani Larkin, who is a PhD candidate in law at the Bond University, remarked that the Uluru statement clearly reflects a new approach to reconciliation by leaders of the ATSIL community. Despite the difficulty of a getting a referendum up in Australia, she said this way of recognising Indigenous rights struck her as being more realistic than past efforts.

“To me, the summit symbolises this reclaiming of collective human rights that have been historically always oppressed with Australian culture and politics,” Ms Larkin said.

“The statement from the heart shows that there has been a significant shift, holistically across indigenous leadership in Australia that is aligning more with theoretical conceptions and internationally recognised collective human rights such as ‘self-determination’ and ‘sovereignty’,” she said.

Ms Larkin grew up on an Aboriginal mission outside Grafton and has worked in a legal capacity for a number of government agencies including the Australian Federal Police, Department of Public Prosecutions ACT, Australian Taxation Office and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service.

The young academic said the “shift” away from focusing on words in the constitution which acknowledged and upheld Indigenous rights to asking how to improve Indigenous political inclusion was cause for hope. Both the Makarrata Commission and consultative body would do this, she said.

However, Ms Larkin noted that more has to be done beyond the scope of the Uluru statement to meaningfully empower Australia’s first peoples in the political decision-making process.

“What we need in the first instance is interaction, consultation, consent. We also need a new value, at least from an Indigenous perspective, placed on asking how were are even going to get [a position of political inclusion] in the first place. This statement is just part of that realisation,” Ms Larkin said.

“I think both of these proposals are completely important, and they’re both symbolic of cultural progression but they are mechanisms.

“What I want to look at is increasing Indigenous voter engagement and federal representation of Indigenous peoples within Australian politics to get that equal decision-making opportunity,” she said.

The Referendum Council, whose report on the Uluru statement will guide how parliament approaches this next step, was established with bi-partisan support from Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and the opposition leader Bill Shorten.

“The next stage now is for the Referendum Council to lend its voice to the proposal by reporting to government and then I think that at that point it really does have to become a discussion for the Australian people because it is our constitution and we all have to grapple with it,” Professor Stone said.

While it as important that a national conversation about the importance of these proposals be had, Professor Stone also stressed the benefit of waiting for more detail. She urged that for the purposes of a meaningful and informed public debate, people should wait for what better sense of how it would all work after the Referendum Council’s report.

Professor Stone is the director of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies at Melbourne University. Her current research looks at how constitutions, in their design and in their application, can unify and nurture diversity in complex, modern society.

Commenting on important considerations about what next after the Uluru summit, Professor Stone said that the regional dialogues between ATSIL representatives in the lead up to last week’s summit showed the process had been initiated by Australia’s first people. Attention should now be turned to bringing the rest of Australia on board, she said.

“I do think at some point it has to become a discussion for all of Australia.”

“To my view, I think it’s a really quite modest and sensible reform and I hope that if people take the time to find out about it in that light, that they come to the same position,” Professor Stone said.

Ms Larkin said if the Uluru propositions are embraced by a double-majority of Australians in a referendum, it would be a sign of long-awaited social progress.

“This is going to be an ongoing struggle because a lot of the loss is generational trauma that has been passed down. But what it does is it reclaims that shift in mentality that we saw in 1967,” Ms Larkin said.

“We are seeing a whole new generation come up, myself included, of Indigenous Australians and non-Indigenous Australians that are really grabbing on to concepts of ‘cultural identity’, ‘citizenship rights’ and what that really means.

“I think that gives hope for not only a more diversified political setting but an open forum,” she said.

Professor Stone pointed to the example of other settled countries, such as New Zealand, Canada and the United States. Australia’s lack of constitutional recognition in contrast to the varied ways these other countries have recognised the rights of their first peoples is stark, she said.

New Zealand has established a commission to supervise agreement-making with Maori people; there is an important provision of the Canadian constitution that recognises indigenous rights; and the United States has incorporated its own constitutional measures for its first people.

“What is unusual about Australia is there is nothing of the catalogue of reforms – treaties, agreement-making processes or Indigenous rights having constitutional recognition. We are the only system that hasn’t done anything by way of constitutional recognition,” she said.

In a statement marking Reconciliation Week #NRW2017, the Law Council of Australia (LCA) called for more meaningful strides towards reconciliation in Australia.

A move closer to true reconciliation is especially appropriate given the anniversaries this year of the 1992 Mabo decision (25 years) and the 1967 Referendum (50 years), LCA President Fiona McLeod SC said.

“The Law Council has long held that the Australian Constitution should formally recognise the distinct identities of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and secure them equality before the law,” Ms McLeod said.

“The Referendum Council’s work in supporting this necessary dialogue has been essential, particularly through the convention at Uluru.

“This is a reform for all Australians, to strengthen the Australian Commonwealth, provide due recognition and respect to the First Australians and bind us all closer in reconciliation,” she said.

Ms McLeod added that achieving reconciliation should be considered a national priority of the highest order. She suggested that this progress must also follow efforts to close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

“As we reflect on National Reconciliation Week, there remains a critical need to address the widening justice gap. Indigenous incarceration rates are continuing to rise and all governments share responsibility.

“An intergovernmental strategy, along with justice targets, is long overdue,” Ms McLeod said.

More than a pipe dream

--My story written for the September 2017 edition of the Lawyers Weekly magazine | More than a pipe dream

One of the world’s most culturally diverse nations and Australia’s nearest neighbor is coming into its own, with businesses and law firms paying close attention to what the maturing political landscape means for its growing population and abundant natural wealth.

A majority of gross domestic product and export earnings for Papua New Guinea (PNG) hinges on its bountiful minerals and energy sectors. But according to the World Bank, the future promise for the young country’s population of 7.9 million relies on the country investing the revenue from its oil and natural gas resources, in particular for public infrastructure and inclusive growth.

One of PNG’s biggest challenges in meeting this growth agenda is the distribution of many communities scattered across remote and rural parts of the country. However, change is afoot and foreign pledges to assist with the refurbishment of key roads connecting more people with PNG’s major centres has triggered a flurry of activity in other areas.

The government, too, has slated public infrastructure initiatives as a priority and, with voting for the new Parliament underway as this article goes to print, that emphasis is only sure to come into sharper focus.

Paving a path for prosperity

For Sarah Kuman, managing associate in Allens’ Port Moresby office, there is much more legal work being undertaken in her home country, generated by projects beyond the scope of her own expertise.

Ms Kuman, who works in the energy, resources and infrastructure practice group at Allens, says that while much of the coverage that PNG receives by international press focuses on its sizeable mining and extraction works, business in the country has matured to encompass other prominent areas.

Specifically, development efforts funded by regional donors and ambitious public infrastructure projects have contributed to this new wave of business interest in PNG.

“A lot of PNG’s international type work is in the resources sector. It gets a lot of publicity because of the very large mines here and because of the PNG LNG project,” Ms Kuman says.

“But that’s not the only work that is available. We have a number of very large superannuation funds who are involved in a lot of the investment work; there is a lot of construction happening and a lot of work as a result of that construction; and there is a lot of infrastructure development.”

Ms Kuman lists a number of key development projects to have led to ongoing work in the country, including a recent government commitment to rural electrification, which has received financial backing from the Asian Development Bank (ADB). That initiative, she says, has seen a series of new power stations constructed across PNG and resulted in numerous people contracted for the build.

“As well as the refurbishment of existing power stations and building new power stations, there was a recent award of financing from the ADB for the rehabilitation of the Highlands Highway, which is the main road that goes from one of our coastal ports in Lae all the way through the highlands provinces and right around to the PNG LNG project,” Ms Kuman says.

“It’s a very large road that had been neglected and the signing off on financing for the rehabilitation of that highway is one of the largest loans in the region. So there’s a quite a bit of focus on infrastructure, development and upgrade or rehabilitation in PNG as well.”

Domestic financing work is plentiful too, Ms Kuman adds, with the significant construction projects driving large and complicated transactions for the local banks such as PNG’s Bank of South Pacific, ANZ and Westpac. The work is reflected in a greater demand for relevant legal experts in the financing space.

“With the level of projects and not just resource projects but infrastructure and construction, which is planned to happen in PNG, there is quite a bit of scope for work to be done and for lawyers to be able to do work,” she says.

Firms on the trail for legal work in PNG

A good indication of how the growing scope of work in PNG is attracting more experts from abroad is borne out in the number of international law firms establishing a presence on the ground in Port Moresby.

Allens and Ashurst were two of the leading stalwarts to have opened local office doors in PNG and as early as the ‘90s had been advising PNG clients. Norton Rose Fulbright is the latest of the mega firms to set up shop in the capital. Meanwhile, the joining of Gadens’ former Port Moresby office with Dentons means one extra global competing for a piece of the legal pie in PNG.

“As far as law firms go, there weren’t many large international firms here until very recently, with the changing from Gadens to Dentons and the opening of the Norton Rose offices.

“With the development and the ongoing production and the PNG LNG project site, I think that’s attracted the attention of some of the larger firms now with the level of work that’s available in PNG,” Ms Kuman says.

A graduate of the University of Papua New Guinea, Ms Kuman joined the Allens office as a paralegal while still in law school. With only one local higher education provider in the country producing law graduates, the firms tend to recruit students straight from university.

For those aspiring commercial lawyers, Ms Kuman adds that options are limited to a domestic mid-tier firm or one of the global players, although the big firms are gradually expanding their offices.

She says other smaller local firms tend to be tied up with litigation matters, so for those local lawyers wanting to gain experience working on large international transactions a firm like Allens is the best place to be.

“I think it can only be a good thing for more firms to be opening shop in PNG and for more lawyers to be working here because of the skills transfer, particularly to our Papua New Guinean lawyers.

“Of the people who are based on the ground in the Port Moresby office at Allens, there is only one partner who is Australian. Everybody else are Papua New Guinean lawyers,” she says.

Ms Kuman believes that the international firms that have landed in PNG are in it for the long game, pointing the cyclical nature of how major copper and gold mines in the country have performed over the years. She suggests that this doesn’t deter the big law firms who recognise a strategic incentive for maintaining a firm presence in the country.

“Around 2007 to 2009, we were constantly dealing with companies applying for new licence or renewing licences, or setting up joint ventures, or transferring exploration licences. There was a period where it was really, really busy and then after 2011, it just all of a sudden went quiet again.

“And this general slowdown in the resource sector seems to coincide with what’s happening around the rest of the world,” she says.

“I’ve only just recently, as recently as a few weeks ago, seen companies dealing with exploration licences or request for requirements for dealing with those types of licences again.

“I think a lot of work that is done overseas or by lawyers based overseas can now be done in PNG, and by teams and firms in PNG,” she says.

Taking a professional track to the Pacific

For foreign lawyers interested in seeking professional opportunities in PNG, Ms Kuman offers an encouraging perspective. She says that opportunity is plenty but interested lawyers will be served well to visit the country first and grasp for themselves what life is really like in PNG, beyond the stories they may read in newspaper headlines.

“I think that it is really important to get an understanding of how things work, seeing for yourself and creating relationships on the ground. Because you can’t really get work and work remotely from an office in an overseas jurisdiction without understand the nuances of PNG,” Ms Kuman says.

Compared to many other Pacific nations, she also suggests that PNG has a good track record for stable government, which ultimately has a bearing on business confidence and a consistent demand for legal services.

“I think a lot of people don’t realise that while things might not happen immediately, [processes] do get done. Generally, the rule of law is respected in PNG; we’ve got a stable government and we don’t have some of the problems that you would see in the news about other countries that have large resource projects with civil unrest and things like that,” Ms Kuman says.

The time is a promising one for foreign lawyers, she notes, with more work being generated by big-ticket construction, development and investment projects, and appetite for legal practitioners versed in sophisticated financial transactions and complicated contracts growing.

Ms Kuman also explains that the relatively small size of the market means junior practitioners have more exposure to important clients and government departments, with greater responsibilities and lease to sink their teeth into exciting work.

“Because of the needs of the business here, junior lawyers do get a lot of really good solid work and they do get a lot of exposure that you wouldn’t otherwise get in offices overseas,” she says

#AusLaw The Headlining Acts of 2016

--My cover story for the Jan 2017 edition of the Lawyers Weekly magazine | Year in Review: The Headlining Acts
If the past 12 months are anything to go by, not even the sky will demarcate the next calendar year in law. By Melissa Coade.

Cirque du Soleil could take a few cues from the legal profession for its next big-top production. With all the near misses, twists and tumbles, the last 12 months have been at once awe-inspiring and bizarre.

Political pundits were treated to a breathtaking series of sideshows, with the presidential election of Donald Trump in the United States and the emphatic opt-out of Britain from the European Union in Brexit. Former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd even fancied himself a dark horse in the running to take on the role of UN Secretary-General, until pollies on home turf refused to support his nomination.

Elected representatives in our nation’s capital put on a number of show-stopping performances themselves, a notable display being the stoush between two legal strongmen, Australia’s first and second law officers. The height of the politicised showdown came in October, when Commonwealth Solicitor-General Justin Gleeson SC resigned in the wake of an uncomfortable Senate committee inquiry.

The committee quoted Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty character in its final report to evoke the fanciful tone of the circumstances that led to the finding that the A-G had failed to properly consult the Solicitor-General: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less”.

The legal and constitutional affairs committee was convened to determine whether a Senate direction, which concerned the way that the Solicitor-General can be briefed, had been tabled by Attorney-General George Brandis QC without proper consultation. That issue became moot once Mr Gleeson stepped down from his post and the direction was quietly withdrawn.

In his letter of resignation, the Solicitor-General cited an “irretrievably broken” relationship with the A-G. Mr Gleeson went on to reiterate that his departure was in no way a step back from the stance he took on matters of controversy before the Senate committee.

The use of whimsical riddles rolled into government reports was certainly not the last time that language took centre stage in 2016. Spectators watched with bated breath as section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act was offered up as a volunteer for a disappearing act. The crowd divided over concerns for free speech on one side and a desire to ensure that legal protections from discrimination remain robust on the other.

Professor Gillian Triggs, another federal statutory office-holder, was subjected to sustained attacks by the media and government. As if she was in a death-defying knife-throwing routine, the president of the Australian Human Rights Commission had a range of near brushes with blades of all shapes and sizes in 2016. From the proposed carve-up of section 18C, to the gay marriage plebiscite, 501 visa cancellations and the scores of asylum seekers detained in offshore detention,

Professor Triggs has been pilloried for either speaking out of place or defending the commission’s role of mediating the plethora of issues it has a legislated mandate to handle.

Policy and the profession

The detention conditions for youths in the Northern Territory drew special attention from the profession in 2016. This issue, which many had considered an elephant in the room for some time, came crashing back onto the scene when a Four Corners report aired shocking CCTV footage that shone a spotlight on the mistreatment of young offenders in correctional facilities such as the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre.

Evidence of guards using a heavy-handed tactics against young inmates and the dehumanising practice of restraining children by strapping them to chairs in spit hoods had onlookers aghast. The president of the Law Society Northern Territory went on the record to say that mistreatment in the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre had been on the government’s radar for years.

The federal government swiftly moved to appoint a royal commission to investigate the territory’s juvenile justice system, with hearings still underway.

A critical analysis of the Indigenous incarceration rate in the NT is one of the key objectives of the royal commission, with the Law Council of Australia (LCA) continuing to champion the nationwide scrutiny of the issue. The latest evidence-based indictment hit in November, when the Productivity Commission revealed that the imprisonment rate of Indigenous Australians has risen by as much as 77 per cent over the past 15 years.

The issue of Indigenous incarceration unavoidably intersects with another of 2016’s key concerns: the funding of legal aid services.

A chorus of voices across the profession returned attention to the alarming precipice that many say faces vulnerable communities. The LCA, National Legal Aid, individual practitioners and community legal centres from coast to coast described the funding situation facing state-aided legal services as teetering on the edge of a “funding cliff”. Many groups expressed alarm at the lack of certainty over the source and extent of future funding for legal aid services.

The flashpoint of that conversation came earlier in 2016 when the government responded to the recommendations of the Productivity Commission report Access to Justice Arrangements. Of the 83 recommendations to improve the accessibility of Australia’s civil justice system that were published in the report, the government was only moved to respond to 16.

National Legal Aid hit out at the response, labelling the government’s pledge to boost funding for legal assistance by $15 million “disappointing”. When responding to the report’s recommendations in May, the A-G cited a “tight fiscal environment” and said the government was “doing what it [could]” to increase the level of funding.

In July, the A-G said that over the next five years, community legal centres (CLCs) can expect funding under the National Partnership Agreement, which made the states and territories responsible for the allocation of $1.6 billion in federal funds. The CLCs warned that a shortfall of $34.83 million will hit the sector under the plan.

Court crises

Criticism was also hurled the other way in Canberra, when Queensland senator Pauline Hanson gave a scathing assessment of the family law system in September.

The One Nation leader used her maiden speech in the upper house to decry the “unworkable” courts that decide family law matters.

She also slammed family law practitioners as being the greedy beneficiaries of a broken system, who are “rubbing their hands together, watching the thousands of dollars coming their way”.

The vocal politician called for a tribunal of citizens to replace the judicial framework that oversees family law in Australia.

Another controversial issue to take centre stage in 2016’s political arena was the promise of a national vote on same-sex marriage.

In response, the Law Institute of Victoria (LIV) wrote an open letter endorsing the LCA’s position against the proposed plebiscite, which it said would be “effectively discriminatory”. The LIV also backed the Australian Human Rights Commission’s assessment that the plebiscite was an inappropriate instrument to resolve fundamental human rights issues.

Baker & McKenzie, Marque Lawyers, Maurice Blackburn and Squire Patton Boggs all endorsed the LIV letter, with Bakers issuing a statement on behalf of the firms saying there was no justification for the “social dislocation” that a plebiscite on marriage equality would cause. The proposal was ultimately voted down in the

Senate in November, with the majority taking the position that the national vote would have exposed Australia’s LGBTI community to unnecessary harm.

Culture tussle

Equality was an overarching theme in 2016, in both the Australian and the international legal professions. However, even a deft magician knows that a culture shift can be a hard trick to pull off. Just enforcing a costume change can be confusing, as five Victorian barristers learnt.

Earlier in the year Victorian Supreme Court Chief Justice Marilyn Warren AC issued an edict to dispense with a 17th-century convention pursuant to section 9A of the Supreme Court Act 1986. The directive resolved that from 1 May judges of the state’s highest court would not wear wigs “but for exceptional circumstances”. Logic follows that advocates are also subject to the same rules.

When five barristers appeared, wigs on heads, in the common law division of the Victorian Supreme Court, Judge Kevin Bell refused to hear their appearances, saying that the horse-hair wigs were “in open defiance” of the Chief Justice. The barristers apologized to the court and offered to remove their wigs.

Diversity disruption

On a separate matter, but still riding the wave of change, CJ Warren remarked at an admissions ceremony for new lawyers that she likes to think women in Victoria “hold up half of the law”.

CJ Warren, who was the first woman to be appointed Chief Justice in Australia, told the group of new lawyers that over the course of her career she has watched as gender representation among the ranks of legal practitioners has dramatically shifted to more accurately reflect that in wider society.

“This change in diversity is something that must be remarked upon. It is also a sign of the future,” she said at a special ceremony hosted at the Banco Court in Victoria last year.

The Law Society of NSW rolled out its Charter for the Advancement of Women in the Legal Profession in 2016. The document aims to encourage strategies focused on retaining women in the profession and promoting the career progression of women lawyers. Ninety-six NSW firms have signed on to the charter to date, including heavy hitters such as Allen & Overy, Ashurst, Herbert Smith Freehills, MinterEllison and Spark Helmore.

Many captains of the profession also led the push for diversity over 2016, such as HSF’s Australia and Asia regional managing partner Sue Gilchrist. She threw her support behind a range of gender equity initiatives in the profession and took on a new role as the firm’s pay equity ambassador to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA). “It is pleasing to see the proactive actions to ensure talented women have equal opportunities in the profession,” Ms Gilchrist remarked.

The release of the WGEA’s annual data set revealed a 34.4 per cent pay gap between women and men in the legal services sector. In terms of equal pay, the numbers placed women in law behind those in other Australian sectors, who on average face a 24 per cent wage gap. While they continue to be paid less than men, women made up the majority of the national sample group of more than 28,000 legal services staff. Since 2014, the gender pay gap in law has been reduced by a mere 1.2 per cent.

Damning headlines hit desks last year with an analysis of incomes reported to the Australian Tax Office. Looking at raw data, a research group at the Australian National University showed that Australian barristers contend with a larger gender pay gap than any other occupation. On average, the ANU found that male barristers reported earning 184 per cent more than women.

While the findings came as no surprise to the legal fraternity’s representative bodies, divergent views about the best way to address the issue soon emerged.

Victorian barrister Fiona McLeod SC, the next practitioner to take the helm of the LCA, launched a revamped equitable briefing policy in June, which includes a number of non-mandatory targets that are intended to be met by 2020. Within four years, the policy hopes to see 30 per cent of all matters briefed out to women barristers, and women barristers earning 30 per cent of the total value of all brief fees.

In November, 11 mid- and top-tier law firms endorsed the LCA’s equitable briefing policy and major corporations such as Telstra, Woolworths and Westpac soon came on board. Not long afterwards, NSW Attorney-General Gabrielle Upton also indicated that she was considering whether the policy might be suitable for state government agencies.

Although the Australian Bar Association (ABA), the NSW Bar Association, the South Australian Bar Association and the Northern Territory Bar Association signed on to the LCA’s policy, their Victorian and Queensland counterparts are yet to follow suit.

Similarly, the law societies of NSW, Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory endorsed the equitable briefing policy in 2016. The Queensland Law Society (QLS) is notably absent from the list.

QLS president Bill Potts articulated his position in the September edition of Proctor, suggesting that for smaller firms it would be “difficult” to forecast the number and type of briefs that would arise a year in advance. He added that a working party had determined that the LCA’s data collecting requirements would impose a “significant administrative burden” on solicitors, and on sole practitioners in particular.

Lawyers in the sunshine state responded to the discord in their own ways.

Hemmant’s List was established in June, marking the state’s first clerk-led barristers’ list model. The online list has co-ordinated the briefing of 27 counsel around Queensland, and was founded to facilitate a more equitable briefing regime. Eleven of the list’s counsel are women. According to the latest ABA figures, women make up 241 of Queensland’s 1,098 practising barristers.

A curated list of all female barristers practising in the state went live in September. The project is co-ordinated by the Women Lawyers Association of Queensland, which adapted content from the Queensland Bar Association website to curate a more searchable profile of women barristers by practice area. Institutional progress slowly continues.

Next gen

The business of law in 2016 was an intensive exercise in looking forward, fortune-telling and future-proofing. Driven by the PM’s innovation agenda and by clients craving innovation, top-tiers moved to harness the concept in different ways.

Some, like Sparke Helmore, opened independent outfits to take innovations to market and offer as much malleability as possible. The national firm launched its innovation hub Bright Sparke in November, with a view to using the new entity as a vehicle to bring customisable solutions to clients. Its focus has now pivoted to offering “solution-driven” products.

In a similar spirit, other giants such as Allens and HSF concentrated on client collaboration as the magic ingredient for their innovation formulas. The popular belief is that one size does not fit all, and law firms have realised that their value propositions need to extend beyond the realm of legal practice.

In October, months after the spectacular Panama Papers data leak, Allens announced that it would open a new end-to-end data governance and data services practice. The firm said its decision to launch the new group was a response to clients looking to exploit opportunities and navigate the complexity of data environments. The move was part of a wider trend, where managing cyber risk and security is now a priority for businesses.

HSF continued to expand the innovative model that is its alternative legal services (ALT) business branch. In 2016 the legal powerhouse opened a new office in Melbourne, and what was originally intended to be a temporary “ALT services pop-up” in Perth has continued to operate into 2017.

Firms also reimagined how their service offerings might contort and soar with the same acrobatic qualities that clients want to hone for themselves. To achieve this, relationships with clients are increasingly being cultivated not at the time that a legal problem arises, but well beforehand. For innovation-conscious professionals, this means more work alongside clients and other allied professional services.

In 2016 Corrs Chambers Westgarth took the challenge to a whole new level, courting a selection of start-ups as a matter of “strategic investment”.

Corrs entered a partnership with an accelerator based at the University of Melbourne. Under the agreement, the firm will deliver a number of masterclasses and half-day clinics to participants in the Melbourne Accelerator Program (MAP).

Corrs teamed up with the tertiary sector after forming the view that start-ups represent a number of high growth companies, and on the back of a successful partnership in 2015, when the firm sponsored an entrepreneurs’ course offered by the Wade Institute.

Beyond legal processes, 2016 also saw firms cleverly leverage technology to identify the best candidates for their workforce. In what might hint at technology’s future reach on the legal hiring front, a contextual recruitment system (CRS) developed in the UK was adapted for the Australian market and for the first time was used to hire this year’s batch of summer clerks by one major firm.

The CRS tool, Rare CRS, provides a more complete picture of would-be lawyers using sophisticated metrics and a data ‘scraping’ method.

Henry Davis York and King & Wood Mallesons plan to deploy Rare CRS for their clerkship recruitment in 2017. Allens implemented the data-driven recruitment algorithm to complement its summer clerkship selection process in June.

And what of the novice members of the profession, who are about to step beyond the hallowed halls of university and into this brave new technological world?

They’ve been put on notice. Core knowledge is essential, as it has always been. But they must be engaged and creative about the routes that their careers may take.

Firms want business-savvy juniors with interesting back stories. They are increasingly being attracted to graduates with dual qualifications in law and technology, and the coveted spots in the competitive job market demand that candidates demonstrate lateral thinking and are open to change. The truly brilliant ones are able to demonstrate the entrepreneurial streak that clients prize.

Australia’s law schools, about 40 nationwide, are certainly paying attention to emerging changes. According to the 2016 chair of the Council of Australian Law Deans (CALD), Professor Carolyn Evans, five years ago there may only have been a handful of law schools that offered electives that integrated technology. Now, she said, universities across the board are tackling the issue with much more serious pragmatism.

The focus is to equip new lawyers with the practical skills that will allow them to successfully engage with the digital environment. Everybody is bracing for a future where artificial intelligence will play a bigger role in the administration of justice and the way clients interact with the legal system.

Bond University law dean Professor Nick James echoed this sentiment, saying that graduates need to be aware of the different kinds of legal roles tomorrow has in store, including more “behind the scenes” roles. He said graduates must complement their intellectual rigour with an understanding of how NewLaw entrants have changed traditional legal services.

The CALD also collected hard statistics to settle once and for all just how many students are graduating and eligible to enter the legal profession. In part, the initiative was taken to dispel the hype around the so-called ‘glut’ in graduating law students. The CALD confirmed that 7,583 students graduated with an LLB or a juris doctor in 2015.

Whatever state the jobs market is in, there is no question that the competition for work is fierce. The promise of more opportunities for would-be lawyers caused a stir in 2016, with new global entrants announcing that they would dive into Australia’s legal market. The star attraction of the year was the landing of US giant White & Case on Aussie soil in December. After the firm headhunted a team of 10 partners from HSF in September, spectators are keeping an eye out for the next round of major hires.

And so the high flyers continue to soar, morphing every so often but at a much more rapid pace.